Beverages are enjoyed at certain consumption characteristics, for example certain temperatures, carbonization levels, and the like. The beverage is stored and consumed from a beverage container, which comprises a port through which a consumer may drink the beverage. The consumer may drink the beverage either by drinking the beverage quickly or by sipping it so that the drinking experience lasts longer. The temperature and quality of the beverage being consumed is of high importance to the consumer and dictates the consumption experience. When a consumer drinks a beverage at an optimal temperature, the consumer enjoys the beverage much more than at other times.
Some methods for regulating a beverage's characteristics are widely known. For example, a common method includes placing ice cubes in a beverage to maintain the beverage's cold temperature or to cool it. However this manner of cooling the beverage causes dilution of the beverage with water as the ice melts. Another disadvantage is that in order to prepare ice cubes from water a significant amount of preparation time is required in order to freeze the water ahead of use.
Artificial ice cubes made from metal or plastic allow reuse and do not cause dilution of the beverage, however the preparation time required is still long prior to use.
Products such as the wine chiller manufactured by Ravi (http://ravisolution.com/en/) enable cooling wine as it is being poured out of a wine bottle. The wine chiller requires cooling in a refrigerator or freezer prior to use, and cannot function without prior cooling. Furthermore, the wine chiller does not allow customization of the beverage temperature. All of the described methods require long term refrigeration of the beverage cooling elements (ice or artificial ice) thus also lead to excessive and wasteful energy consumption.
Other products for cooling a beverage operate by externally cooling the entire beverage container. This form of cooling the beverage requires waiting a lengthy period of time prior to drinking the beverage, and the beverage cannot be enjoyed immediately. Some of the products for cooling a beverage comprise a USB connection to enable connecting the product to a computer or USB port. The product is used to cool a beverage, such as a can or a bottle, and the USB connection provides a power source to continually cool the beverage, e.g. while the user is working on the computer. In some cases, the product is battery operated and completely encloses the beverage container. These products cool the entire container, and require waiting a long period of time until the beverages reaches the desired drinking temperature.
Additional methods for cooling a beverage container are based on adsorption of water vapor into zeolite under a vacuum. For example, this method is demonstrated by Zeo-Tech GmbH for cooling champagne bottle and a soda can using an external disposable device. In both cases, the process can take over 10 minutes for the beverage container to reach an acceptable temperature for drinking and lacks temperature regulation control.
Another variety of products allow cooling a beverage's container by spinning the container in ice and thus cooling the beverage in the container faster. However, this method also requires the use of ice cubes and is not convenient.
Consumers prefer a specific range of temperatures for their drinks. For example, coffee is preferably consumed at a temperature greater than 71 degrees Celsius, whereas soda is preferably consumed at a temperature lower than 15 degrees Celsius.
Experiments have been performed to examine the effects of cup size, gender, age, and parameters of sipping on sip volume of a beverage consumed by a consumer. Increasing the size of a container from 150 to 600 ml increased the volume of a sip by about 15%. Males took larger sips, and had a significantly larger maximum oral capacity than females. However, in a second group of taller females and shorter males, the difference in sip size between genders was minimized.
A second experiment examined sip size from a cup and from straw drinking. The experiment was to show the effects of sequential sipping, i.e. one to five sips, personal characteristics (height, weight), age, and gender on a sip volume. Height proved to be a good predictor of individual differences in sip volume. Cup drinking produced larger sip volumes than straw drinking, but only in a group of adults. Volume per sip decreased as more sips were taken by the consumer. A reasonable guide for sipping from a cup is about 25 ml per sip for males and 20 ml per sip for females. However, this estimation varies as a function of cup size, straw sipping, and sequential sipping.
In order to regulate the temperature of a beverage inside a container to a certain degree there is a need to place the beverage container in a refrigeration system. In addition one may also provide better insulation to the container, to slow the rate at which the beverage temperature reverts to a surrounding temperature. The beverage container itself may comprise a system that enables regulating the temperature of the beverage within the container. All temperature regulating systems for beverage containers require large quantities of energy to regulate the beverage temperature in the container so as to provide a unified temperature to the total amount of the beverage contained within the container. Such temperature regulation may require a long time duration, especially when the beverage volume is large and far from a desired temperature, and especially if the beverage container is exposed to ambient temperature. The time duration required to cool a beverage results in the beverage losing its quality while the beverage container is opened or exposed to ambient temperature. For example, the consumption experience of a beer is less than optimal once a beer container is opened, since the beer is exposed to air and the temperature of the beer is increased.
Other characteristics of the beverage also effect the drinking experience of the consumer, for example the carbonization level of the beverage, the sugar content of the beverage, acidity of the beverage or the like. Once the container is opened these characteristics change due to exposure to the outside environment and reduce the quality of the beverage. For example, once a soda container is opened or the soda is poured into a glass, the carbonization level of the beverage decreases as the gas escapes into the environment, causing the beverage to become flat. In another example, when milk-based beverages are exposed to the environment, their acidity levels change and cause the beverage to become less enjoyable and in some cases harmful to drink when exposed for too long.